All atwitter

Thursday, September 10, 2009

This here is nothing short of fantastic. Kudos to all UK citizens who signed the petition and to Mr. Gordon Brown and whoever else worked to make this happen. This goes a long way towards better recognizing Alan Turing's wonderful legacy and the appalling way in which he and the rest of the LGBT community was treated for too long. I'm impressed and heartened by this current British Government's gesture and think that, despite many other problems that currently plague European societies, this is one of many things that show the dramatic social progress that was won since the middle of last century. The good will for actions like these is one of those things that helps Britain continue setting, albeit imperfectly, an example for the rest of the world.

Friends

How fresh, how calm, stiller than this of course, the air was in the early morning; like the flap of a wave; the kiss of a wave; chill and sharp and yet (for a girl of eighteen as she then was) solemn, feeling as she did, standing there at the open window, that something awful was about to happen; looking at the flowers, at the trees with the smoke winding off them and the rooks rising, falling; standing and looking until Peter Walsh said, "Musing among the vegetables?" — was that it? — "I prefer men to cauliflowers" — was that it? He must have said it at breakfast one morning when she had gone out on to the terrace — Peter Walsh. He would be back from India one of these days, June or July, she forgot which, for his letters were awfully dull; it was his sayings one remembered; his eyes, his pocket-knife, his smile, his grumpiness and, when millions of things had utterly vanished-how strange it was! — a few sayings like this about cabbages.